Interim RTA CEO leaving for new role

The Regional Transit Authority of Southeast Michigan held off on hiring Tiffany Gunter as full-time CEO for the past eight months, and on Thursday she opted to quit for another job.

Her last day will be Jan. 2. She declined to say what her next job will be other than it's a government position in the area.

Gunter, 38, has been interim CEO since Michael Ford was fired in March over questions about his expenses.

Her departure comes amid the RTA's ongoing quest to craft a regional transit plan agreeable to the region's often-at-loggerheads elected leaders, and then get a tax approved by voters in 2018 or 2020. How her departure will affect those efforts isn't immediately clear. Deputies for the elected leaders have been holding meetings to work out plans themselves rather than relying on the RTA staff to assemble a master plan.

"The direction of RTA is still in negotiations by the regional leaders. Our board really cannot move forward without support of the regional leaders. So, here we are in continued uncertainty. In the meantime, Tiffany got an offer she couldn't refuse," RTA Board Chairman Paul Hillegonds said Thursday afternoon. "I'm really sorry we're losing her."

Carmine Palombo, deputy director at the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments regional planning agency, will act as interim CEO until a replacement is hired, the RTA said. SEMCOG provides the RTA with office space and support.

The RTA's transportation planner, Lucas Reigstad, is also leaving. Supervising planner Ben Stupka left in May and wasn't replaced. Instead, RTA has been using contract and voluntary help, Hillegonds said.

There won't be a search for a full-time CEO until the RTA board hears from the regional leadership of the agency's constituent members — Detroit and Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Washtenaw counties — on their preferences for the RTA's future direction.

"It doesn't make sense to do a search for a permanent person until we have a better information on how we move forward and when we move forward," Hillegonds said, adding that he heard nothing that indicated any leaders opposed Gunter being hired full time.

"I think we'll have clarity before end of year," he said. Deputies are scheduled to meet to discuss the RTA within the next couple of weeks, he added.

Gunter confirmed that it was the long wait for the RTA to make her permanent CEO that led her to seek a job elsewhere.

"It did indeed," she said. Another entity made her an offer the RTA could not, and she said she understands how the board was handcuffed in its inability to hire her full time.

The RTA has to have a full-time leader, with the security of a contract, who can make difficult decisions, Gunter said.

"An interim is not positioned to make those difficult decisions," she said.

Mass transit has been a concern for decades in the region, and taken on added emphasis this year after online retail giant Amazon.com said it would be a criteria for choosing a market for its second headquarters, something Detroit is seeking to land the facility's 50,000 jobs. Regional political squabbling has long stalled any effort to create a genuine regional mass transit plan, and the RTA CEO has to be someone who can navigate those politics.

Hillegonds told Crain's earlier this month that he believed Gunter would be given the CEO job full time soon, and explained that a decision was delayed because the RTA was trying to sort out its long-term future. It suffered public embarrassment from Ford's firing on the heels of a narrow defeat of its metro Detroit transit tax a year ago.

Ford was fired without cause in March. He was to be paid the remaining $161,000 on his three-year contract that began in 2014. His annual salary was $200,000.

Gunter was being paid $150,000 salary as interim CEO. She was hired as Ford's deputy in 2014 and oversaw the day-to-day functions of the agency.

Ford was hired away from the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority in 2014 to lead the metro Detroit RTA and its quest to get a regional mass transit tax approved by voters. The effort failed at the polls in November 2016.

The RTA has been spending about $1.7 million annually on administrative operations, mostly salaries and studies, and needs to find additional funding — and now a CEO — as the organization awaits word on its future.

Before taking the RTA job, Gunter was an executive dean of Inter-Institutional Affairs and Educational Partnerships at the Wayne County Community College District. The University of Michigan-Dearborn graduate has also worked for Chrysler Corp. and Kmart.

Detroit's RTA was created by the state in 2012 — after more than 40 years of failures to do so — to coordinate various transit agencies in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Washtenaw counties.